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Wednesday, January 11, 2012

If Little Johnny Beats His Slaves Twice Each Day........Math Class In Georgia

I remember homework when I was a kid. it was hard. I hated it. It was easy to put off until the next morning, when you scrambled to finish it over breakfast, or tried to write legibly on a school bus careening down the highway. Very different from homework of some school children in Gwinnett County, Georgia.

Parents are outraged after seeing their children's third grade math homework, referencing slavery and beatings.As in: "Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" Um, Georgia? Are you teaching kids math using two-hundred-year-old books? Or are you just out of your mind?

Another math problem: "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?"

Child abuse and slavery? In math class? Irate parents contacted the principal of Beaver Ridge Elementary school in Norcross, demanding to know how these types of questions made it onto homework assignments. Yet, with no adequate answers to their questions, they moved on to Gwinnett County School District officials and heard the most ridiculous response ever.District spokeswoman Sloan Roach said: "In this one, the teachers were trying to do a cross-curricular activity" and explained the teachers were trying to incorporate social studies lessons into the math problems, which is something the school district encourages.

So, you want to multi-task by teaching slavery and math at the same time.And how is that accomplished by using these moronic questions?

"We understand that there are concerns about these questions and we agree that these questions were not appropriate," Roach said, adding that there is a process in place to review questions before they are handed out to students.

Um, and yet even Roach admits that didn't happen with these questions, though she promised that the administration will work with teachers on how to develop better questions that are "meaningful and appropriate."

4 comments:

Cross-curricular is another educational fad and can be useful in some circumstances but not in this instance. What impresses me (or will if they actually are mastering this) is doing division by 8. What stresses me is that they are delving so deeply into slavery at the third grade (beatings?!?!).